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One or two family unit meals a week may help kids eat up more fruits and vegetables , a new study suggest .

In the U.K. study , small fry whose kinsperson always eat meals together consumed 4.4 ounces ( 1.5 portions ) more fruit and vegetable a day equate with children whose family never feed together .

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And kids who hadfamily mealsjust once or twice a week consumed 3.4 snow leopard ( 1.2 percentage ) more create a day .

" Modern life often foreclose the whole family from sitting around the dinner party table , but this inquiry shows that even just Sunday lunch round the tabular array can help improve the diet of our kinsperson , " said study researcher Meaghan Christian , of the University of Leeds .

household meal may put up an opportunity for children to learn hefty eating habits from their parents or siblings , and are also an incentive to plan meals , the researchers said .

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Cutting fruits and vegetable into smaller pieces also come along to increase expenditure . small fry ate half a dowery more of fruit and vegetable ( 1.4 ounces ) if their parents said they always cut up these foods .

The majority of children in the United States , Europe and Australia do n’t consume the recommended daily amount of fruits and vegetables ( five servings a day ) , the research worker say . [ See10 Ways to Promote Kids ' Healthy Eating Habits ] .

Previous research has testify that nestling who dine with their families are less likely to be corpulent and more likely to corrode levelheaded foods .

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The new bailiwick ’s finding are based on information from 2,000 simple school tiddler in London , with an average long time of 8 . parent answer motion about their child ’s intellectual nourishment consumption over the last day , as well as how often the family use up meals together . Sixty - three percent of the nipper did not deplete the recommended five servings offruits and vegetablesa day .

Because the results are base on parent ' composition of their kids ' food consumption , they may be subject to bias , the researchers notice . Parents may overreport the amount of fruits and vegetables their child eat because a healthy diet is socially desirable . But the parents of children in the report did follow a videodisc to pick up how to properly report their baby ’s nutrient aspiration , the investigator said .

The study is published today ( Dec. 19 ) in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health .

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overtake it on : One or two family meals a workweek may increase a child ’s fruit and vegetable intake .

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